Bio:

Real Name: Birth name unknown, currently Awele Claws-the-Moon

Nickname: “Moonclaw”

Date of Birth: Approx. 2035

The young woman now named Awele was born in a gutter to ostensibly Native American looking parents, but never once saw them growing up. One of an incredible throng of street children in the modern city, Awele grew up nameless and barely capable of language, living on trash and sleeping in whichever alley she found herself in—until the day she discovered her totem. Awele (and her totem as well, for that matter) would relate that it was in fact her totem which found her, when the young child dug up an ancient trinket in the trash. It was a simple wooden hat or mask of sorts, handmade with plain blackened wood and iron trimming, covering the forehead as well as the top of the skull. A pair of dull yellow-green eyes with black wooden diamonds for pupils ornament the front of the mask, and the top of the mask comes to two points, like the ears of a cat. In fact, the street urchin had dug up a magical artifact handed down through generations of Sioux shamans, which was currently inhabited by the astral remains of a cat shaman who had served in the Sioux Nation Special Forces (SNSF) as a healer in a unit of crack shamatic espionage commandos. When this Sioux warrioress lost her meat body on an astral strike against UCAS government targets, she sniffed out the nearby astral signature of a long lost Sioux Nation heirloom and inhabited it before her astral form dissipated, and then began her search for an appropriate subject. Or so the mask claims.

Regardless, after first donning the artifact and feeling its energy flow through her, the dirty little street child’s eyes opened upon the astral plane for the first time in her newly-Awakened life, and she witnessed a proud, impossibly lean cat, the size of a tiger, with shimmering silver fur buffeting gently in an astral wind, with bright yellow-green eyes when saw and seemed to understand all. The astral being licked the young urchin’s astral forehead, and named her “Awele” with a soft, impossibly pleasing purr which warmed the child’s soul. Ever since, Awele Claws-the-Moon has obeyed her totem’s instruction.

In the roughly 15 years following, Awele has undergone rigorous training, focusing her mind and body to perfect the arts of infiltration and magically assisted silent-kills the SNSF are known for. Moonclaw has found many people willing to employ her newfound talents, and the influence of her totem, coupled with her homeless past, have given her relatively expensive tastes, dressing and cleaning up simply yet meticulously well. Her values seem almost completely alien to the average member of society, and her past on the streets and exclusive relationship with the voice in her mask earns her few friends. Although Awele’s motivation and flimsy moral structure stems almost entirely from her desire to compile great sums of money and buy extravagant comforts, her totem has greater objectives for her life, and the tension between Awele’s selfish, reclusive nature and the great silver cat spirit’s pro-Sioux, pro-environmental tasks becomes more strained with each cycle of the moon.

On the streets, Moonclaw wears a plain, natural leather jacket, with black cat fur lining the shoulders and sleeves, and a matching skirt which falls below the knee with lightweight leather boots. Her hair is long and in two plain braids, with a cat claw necklace and identical earrings. No matter where she goes, she wears her small wooden forehead mask on her belt (or forehead, when invisible or healing) and tends to carry a pistol holstered on her inner left thigh beneath her skirt. When on mission, she wears a relatively loose fitting, yet perfectly tailored, combat jumpsuit in gray and dark blue camo. On her face she wears her mask, covering her forehead and halfway up her hairline, with a pair of smart goggles studded with various colored lenses for range-finding and infared sight. She prefers to fight with her bow when invisible, a composite fiberglass model which folds and has a fluffy cat-tail tassel on the upper portion. In stickier situations where she cannot enjoy the pleasure of surprising and disabling her foes, she will resort to her firearms and more offensive magic. While she savors dispatching her foes silently and with as much style as possible, she will become ferocious and brutal if cornered and wounded. Although Moonclaw’s soul is too base and uncaring to work her mentor’s healing magic without wearing the mask focus, her stealth and disruptive spells stem from her own savage, stalking nature and can be cast without aide. In combat she strongly prefers holding the element of surprise whenever possible, and in an open firefight will favor her own safety unless losing her teammates would land her in more serious trouble. She dislikes small talk, being surprised, and above all, getting wet or dirty.